If you’ve experienced networking issues with your iPad or iPhone, you may have called Apple for support. Many times they recommend that you “Reset Network Settings.” But, what exactly does this operation do? Let’s explore.

What’s included in this Reset Network Settings process?

This is a complicated answer and how it affects you depends on several factors. What this process does, in addition to resetting a bunch of locally stored device settings on the iOS device itself, it also deletes network settings stored in your iCloud Keychain. If you have only an iPhone and own no other devices (i.e., no iPads, no Macs, no iPods, no Apple Watches, no Apple TVs, nothing else), resetting these settings will likely work just fine for you.

However, if you own or use multiple Apple devices and these devices participate in iCloud Keychain, things can get complicated… very, very complicated. The “or use” statement is the one that makes this process much more complicated. If you have a work Mac computer that’s hooked up to your Apple ID and is participating in iCloud Keychain, performing “Reset Network Settings” on an iPhone can become problematic for your work computer. How? First, let’s find out more about iCloud Keychain.

iCloud Keychain

What is iCloud Keychain? This is an iCloud network service that stores sensitive passwords and credit card information in a secure way. This iCloud service also lets multiple iOS, MacOS, tvOS and WatchOS devices participate and use this data as part of your Apple ID. If you own multiple Apple devices, they can all share and use this same set of sensitive data without having to enter it individually on each device (convenience).

Your iCloud Keychain is specific to your Apple ID which is protected by your Apple ID login and password. The iCloud Keychain was created as both a convenience (all devices can share data), but also secure in that this data is protected behind your Apple ID credentials.

When you “Reset Network Settings” on any iOS (or possibly even MacOS, tvOS or even WatchOS) device and your devices participate in iCloud Keychain synchronization, a “Reset Network Settings” can cause networking issues for all of your devices. Why?

The iCloud Keychain stores WiFi access point names (SSIDs) and passwords. Not only that, it also stores credit cards that you might use with Apple Pay (this becomes important later). When you run “Reset Network Settings” on any iOS device, it will wipe all access point SSIDs and Passwords from your iCloud Keychain.

You might be asking, “Why is this a problem?” This will become a problem for all devices participating in iCloud Keychain. All of your Apple devices share in using this SSID and password data from your iCloud Keychain. This important to understand. Because of this level of sharing, it only takes one device to learn of an access point for all Apple devices to use that network when in range. For example, if you bring your Mac to a convention and log it into an access point at the convention, your Mac logs this access point data to the iCloud Keychain. Your phone will immediately pick up on this new access point addition and also connect to that access point using the newly stored password as soon as it finds it… automagically.

Likewise, it only takes one device to wipe an access point and all devices lose access to it. It’s a single shared location for this networking data. One device adds it, all can use it. One device deletes it, all devices forget about it. Is this a good idea? You decide.

Reset Network Settings and Multiple Devices

Here’s where things get complicated with iCloud Keychain. If you are having network troubles with your iPhone, you might be requested by Apple Support to “Reset Network Settings”.

If all of your MacOS, tvOS, iOS and WatchOS devices participate in iCloud Keychain and you actually perform “Reset Network Settings” on your iPhone, it will wipe not only the current access point, but every access point that every device is aware of. It returns your network settings on iOS (and in iCloud Keychain) to a clean slate to start it over. It does this to try and clear out any problematic network settings. It also deletes known access points from the iCloud Keychain. This wipes access to this data for ALL of your Apple devices, not just the one you performed “Reset Network Settings” on.

What this means is that every device participating in iCloud Keychain will lose access to ALL access points that had previously been known because they have been deleted as part of “Reset Network Settings”. If your iOS device knew of all access points, they will ALL be wiped from iCloud Keychain. This means that every device will immediately lose access to its current access point. It also means that every Apple device you own must now be touched to reselect a new access point requiring you to reenter the password for that access point… On. Every. Apple. Device!

For example, I own two Macs, two iPads, three iPhones and two iPod Touches. A “Reset Network Settings” from a single device means I will need to go and manually touch 9 different devices to reconnect them to WiFi after a single iOS device performs a “Reset Network Settings” operation. It requires this because every device has lost access to even its home network which means no access to iCloud Keychain… which means, touching every device to get them back onto a WiFi network.

For me, it was even more complicated than the mere hassle of setting up WiFi on every device. It wiped known access points created by my employer on my Mac which were put into my iCloud Keychain… access points where I didn’t know the name or passwords. Thankfully, I was able to recover this data from another co-worker’s Mac and get back onto my corporate network. Otherwise, I’d have been down at my IT team’s desk asking for them to fix my Mac… and all as a result of performing “Reset Network Settings” on my iPhone.

Horrible, horrible design.

Avoiding This Problem

Can this problem be avoided? Possibly. If you turn off iCloud Keychain on your iOS device BEFORE you perform “Reset Network Settings”, it may avoid wiping the data in the iCloud Keychain. I say “may” because after you take the device out of iCloud Keychain, then reset the network settings and then rejoin it to iCloud Keychain, it may propagate the differences at the time the device rejoins. Hopefully, not. Hopefully, the newly reset device will ONLY download the existing data in the iCloud Keychain without making any modifications to it. With Apple, you never know.

The secondary issue is that removing your iPhone from iCloud Keychain may remove stored credit cards. This may mean reentry of all of your credit cards after you have “Reset Network Settings” and after you have rejoined your device to the iCloud Keychain. This may also depend on iOS version. I just tried removing iCloud Keychain, then performed “Reset Network Settings”, then rejoined iCloud Keychain and all my cards are still intact on the device. If you’re on iOS 11 or iOS 10, your results may vary.

Why is this a problem?

First off, I don’t want to have to go touch many devices after a single device reset. That’s just stupid. Second, removing the device from iCloud Keychain to perform “Reset Network Settings” will wipe all of your current credit card data from the device and likely from the iCloud Keychain. Third, Apple needs to fix their shit to allow more granularity in what it wipes with “Reset Network Settings”. In fact, it shouldn’t even touch iCloud Keychain data. It should wipe only locally stored information on the device and then see if that works. If that doesn’t work, then wipe the data on iCloud Keychain, but only as a LAST RESORT!

I understand that Apple seems to think that wiping all network data (including what’s in iCloud Keychain) might solve “whatever the problem is”, but that’s just a sledgehammer. If what’s stored in iCloud Keychain were a problem, my 8 other devices should be experiencing the same issue as well. It’s basically, stupid Apple troubleshooting logic.

As I mentioned, disabling iCloud Keychain may unregister your credit cards from your device (and from the Keychain). I know this was the case in iOS 11, but in iOS 12 it seems to not require this any longer. I definitely don’t want to have to rescan all of my credit cards again onto my iOS device to restore them. It takes at least 30 minutes to do this with the number of cards I have to input. With the Apple Watch, this process is horribly unreliable and lengthy. It can sometimes take over an hour diddling with Bluetooth timeouts and silly unreliability problems to finally get all of my cards back onto the Watch (in addition to the iPhone).

Such time wasting problems over a single troubleshooting thing that should be extremely straightforward and easy. Horrible, horrible design.

Representatives and Suggestions

If you’re taking to an Apple representative about a networking problem and they suggest for you to “Reset Network Settings”, you should refer them to this article so they can better understand what it is they are asking you to do.

Neither Apple Support, nor will any of your phone carrier support teams warn you of this iCloud Keychain problem when requesting “Reset Network Settings.” They will ask you to perform this step as though it’s some simple little step. It’s not!

Whenever Apple asks me to perform the “Reset Network Settings” troubleshooting step, I always decline citing this exact problem. Perhaps someone at Apple will finally wake up and fix this issue once and for all. Until then, you should always question Apple’s troubleshooting methods before blindly following them.

How to disable iCloud Keychain

To disable the iCloud Keychain on your iOS device, go to …

Settings=>Your Name=>iCloud=>Keychain

… and toggle it off. Your Name is actually your name. It is located at the very top of settings. Once toggled off, it will likely unregister your credit cards stored on your iOS device, but I guess it’s a small price to pay if you really need to reset these network settings to your restore networking to 100% functionality. Of course, there’s no guarantee that “Reset Network Settings” or jumping through any of these hoops will solve this problem. There’s also the possibility that “Reset Network Settings” could still screw with your iCloud Keychain even if you disable it before performing “Reset Network Settings”.

With Apple, your mileage may vary.

How to Reset Network Settings

Settings=>General=>Reset=>Reset Network Settings

If you own multiple Apple devices and they are using iCloud Keychain, don’t perform this step first. Instead, disable iCloud Keychain first (above), then perform this step. If you only own one Apple device, there is no need to disable iCloud Keychain.

Network Problems and Quick Fixes

In my most recent case of being prompted to “Reset Network Settings”, my phone’s Wi-Fi calling feature simply stopped working. I first called T-Mobile and they referred me to “Reset Network Settings” (based on Apple’s documentation) and they also referred me to Apple Support. Because I already knew about the iCloud Keychain problem from a previous inadvertent wipe of all of my network access points, this time I opted to turn off iCloud Keychain before attempting “Reset Network Settings.” Suffice it to say that “Reset Network Settings” didn’t do a damned thing, as I full well expected.

In fact, I tried many options prior to “Reset Network Settings”. These included:

Disabling and enabling Wi-Fi calling

Joining a different access point

Restarting my Comcast modem

Restarting my network router

Restarting my Apple Airport

Restarting my phone

Hard restarting my phone

Disabling and enabling Wi-Fi

Dumping Sysdiagnose logs and digging through them

Killing and restarting the Phone app

I tried all of the above and nothing resolved the issue. No, not even “Reset Network Settings”.

I recall reading a year or two back that sometimes Airplane Mode can resolve some network connectivity issues. I’m not sure exactly what Airplane Mode actually does under the hood in detail, but it appears to modify a bunch of configs and disable all networking including Cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and anything else that performs networking.

Once Airplane Mode was enabled, I allowed the phone to sit for 30 seconds to make sure all components recognized Airplane Mode. Then, I disabled Airplane Mode. Almost immediately, the phone’s menu bar now says ‘T-Mobile Wi-Fi’. Wow, that actually worked.

If you’re having networking problems on your iPhone, try enabling then disabling Airplane Mode instead of “Reset Network Settings”. At least, it’s worth a try before resorting to disabling iCloud Keychain followed by “Reset Network Settings”.

iOS 11 vs 12

The first time I experienced my issue with the iCloud Keychain and “Reset Network Settings”, I was using iOS 11. I’m firmly of, “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.” This means, I haven’t tested this on iOS 12 to see if Apple has changed their ways. It’s very doubtful they have and very likely this problem still persists even in the most current version of iOS.

Design Rant Mode On

Apple seems to be under the delusion that we’re still living in a one-device-ownership-world. We’re not. We now own Macs, Apple TVs, Watches, iPhones and iPads that all rely on their multi-device services, such as iCloud Keychain. To design a feature that can wipe the entire data shared by multiple devices is not only the very definition of shit software, it’s also the very definition of a shit company that hasn’t the first clue of what the hell they’ve actually built.

You might have noticed that I like to write review and tip articles for Apple’s product line. Recently, I’ve picked up an Apple Watch Sport. It’s time for a rundown. Let’s explore.

Watch Functionality

It’s called the Apple Watch for a reason, because it is first and foremost a watch. You’re probably wondering just how good a watch it really is? Let’s just put it this way, the old square iPod that could be used as a watch has better watch faces than the Apple Watch. There are effectively 5 different faces. Two ‘analog’ style faces, one huge number version, a mickey mouse watch and a smaller digital face (that is used in multiple different versions).

Because the faces are so limited and there are so few of them, I’m quite disappointed in what’s here. Instead of providing a large number of faces, what Apple focuses on is customizability of a few faces. So, even though you can customize limited aspects of the watch faces, there’s only so much Apple actually lets you do. This is a little disappointing.

For example, if you want a custom background, you can do that so long as you can live with a digital watch version. This can’t be done with an ‘analog’ dial display. This is unfortunate. Though, there’s still time for Apple to add this in an update.

On the upside, when you flip your wrist up to look at your watch, the face automatically turns on. No need to press buttons.

Watch Face Sizes

There are two sizes available from Apple. There is the 38mm and the 42mm sizes (so far). To be perfectly fair, there’s very little difference between these two sizes as far as utility goes. So, don’t expect miracles from buying the bigger size. Both screens are small and having a slightly larger screen here really doesn’t help much at all. I’m sure Apple may offer more sizes in the future, but for now these are two sizes offered.

What I will say about the sizes is that they work well for a watch face, but for using for anything other than a watch is mostly uncomfortable. Though, using the Apple Watch for any period of time makes you appreciate just how big your iPhone’s display is even if you’re using the iPhone 5.

Remote Control

This is primarily where the Apple Watch shines brightest… being a remote control for your iPhone. That is, playing music, as a speakerphone, answering simple text messages or even just asking Siri basic questions. Not having to pull your phone out of your pocket for simple and basic activities is nice enough. But, is this one feature really worth the price so far? Let’s continue to explore.

Watch Band

The one cool thing that Apple has rethought is the watch band. Instead of being a standard belt type closure, the band has been reinvented. I know a lot of people don’t really like the sport band, but I actually like it for a lot of reasons. The biggest reason is that a standard band is like a belt… which means that the band has that little tail that sticks out and catches on things and is generally frustrating.

Apple’s sport band rethinks this. Now the clasp pops onto a peg that sticks up easily, which makes putting it on one-handed a snap (literally) and then the end of the band tucks into and inside of the band leaving no little flap to hang out and catch on things. I know this piece is a little hard to describe, but once you try it out, you’ll understand why the line of this band is hard to beat. Changing watch bands is pretty much a snap. You press the release button and slide out the band. Then slide in the new one. Repeat the process on the other side. It’s far simpler than trying to depress those tiny little pins from most watch bands.

Again, does this make the Apple Watch worth the money? Let’s keep going.

Applications

As I talked about above, the Apple Watch is primarily a remote controller for the iPhone… and applications are no exception. What that means is to use am application on the watch, it must also have a corresponding iPhone version before a watch version can be loaded. Additionally, the app has to support a watch interface version before you can even use it on the Apple Watch. This also means that there are limited applications that currently even support the Apple Watch. The few that are there range from clumsy to elegant with most falling towards the clumsy side.

Mail

Yes, you can receive notifications of email on your watch. Unfortunately, there is really no HTML rendering piece for the phone. So, many emails that arrive won’t allow for proper viewing on the watch interface. So, don’t expect miracles in this department.

Fitness

If you are fitbit user, you might find the fitness pieces of the Apple Watch useful in that it can keep up with your fitness goals through the built in wrist monitor. So, pop it on and away you go. You just have to fill in all of your details into the fitness app to get started.

News

Here’s where the watch shines once again. If you’re interested in keeping up with the latest news events, there are a number of iPhone apps that support the Apple Watch. This means you can keep up with the latest trending news through alerts on the watch. This is another bright spot for the watch.

It also has a stopwatch, timers and alarms. You can easily set the alarms through Siri.

Siri and Haptic Feedback

This is one of the better features here. I always hated Siri’s voices. They’re unnatural and annoying. So, when the watch remains silent of voice in lieu of haptic feedback after a Siri query, that made me smile. I love this feature. I’d rather the watch (or any device) respond with haptic feedback over using a voice to talk back.

Sounds

There are limited sounds. However, the Apple Watch combines haptic feedback (shaking) to let you know when it’s done something. In combination with haptic feedback, the phone plays a small chime. Like expensive analog watches, some come with small chimes and bells. The Apple Watch mimics that sound whenever notifications are made. So, it makes the Apple Watch feel like an expensive Tourbillion or some other very expensive watch when it chimes after an alert or when an alarm goes off. It’s not some cloying and silly frog or other digital sound effect. In combination with the haptic feedback, the chime feels and sounds real when on the wrist. It’s as though there’s a little bell inside of the unit. It’s an uncanny sensation. Apple definitely got this right. Though, I would also like a little more customizability in the sounds for alerts, but I’m guessing we’ll see that in WatchOS 3 or 4 or sometime later down the road.

The Crown

Think of the crown’s use on this as a scroll wheel on the mouse. Effectively, that’s how it’s used on the watch interface. You can scroll through email messages, through lists, through settings, etc. Because the touch screen can be clumsy because of its size, the crown’s scrolling feature makes up for that clumsiness making the device a bit more elegant to use. Unfortunately, even with WatchOS 2.0, the crown is not utilized nearly enough. There are a lot of settings areas and other locations that are perfect candidates for using the crown to scroll. Unfortunately, you’ll find that you’ll still be flicking through lists with your finger on the touch surface.

The Touch Screen

One of the things Apple included is that not only is it a touch screen, it is pressure sensitive. So, the harder you press, you can get into different modes or activate features. While this pressure sensitive nature is a cool addition to the watch, it is also well underutilized. In fact, the only real place where it’s used is in customizing the watch faces.

The Charger

Here’s easily the most clumsy piece included with the watch. Not only is the somewhat concave disk shaped charger goofy, the magnet is not nearly strong enough. What that means is that the watch falls away from the charger by simple movement of the watch on the table. It’s frustrating and clumsy all at the same time. I don’t really understand why the magnet isn’t a whole lot stronger. However, having purchased the more expensive Apple flying saucer charger, the magnet on this unit is much much stronger. In fact, it’s the strength that should have been included on the included clumsy disc charger.

Storing Music

Yes, you can store a single playlist on the Apple Watch itself. How exactly you play that music back without the phone, I’m not entirely sure. I’m assuming you can pair a bluetooth headset and listen that way or maybe it plays out of the tiny speaker on the watch. Whatever way it happens, the watch itself has no ports, so it must playback wireless. It seems that the watch may have about 8GB of memory storage. This is the same as the base model of the previous square iPod that could also be used as a watch.

Screen Type

The screen is an AMOLED display. What that means is inky blacks and vibrant whites. You don’t get that annoying bright grey cast you get with backlit units. It also means that it is not backlit. This enhances the watch look and feel and reduces battery life to only those pixels that happen to be lit.

Battery Life

On the 42mm version, I have been pleasantly surprised that when I get home, it’s still no less than 50%. Most times, it’s still in the 80% area. However, this is still a mostly brand new watch. So, I need to set it up with a few charge cycles to get how the battery will really last. As for battery replacement, it doesn’t appear user replaceable. So, I’m guessing you’ll need to make an appointment with Apple’s Genius bar and have them replace it.

Home Screen

The home screen for the watch is, you guessed it, a watch face. Everything else pretty much revolves around this screen. You pull down from the top for notifications. You pull up from the bottom to bring up running apps (music remote control, battery life, fitness, etc… by swiping left or right).

App Screen

While I understand the purpose behind this horrid mess of round icons screen, it’s ugly and hard to get to the things you need. This is the screen with small circle icons arranged into a geometric shape. When you drag it around, the edge circles shrink. While I understand the utility of this on the tiny watch screen, it’s hard to navigate the icons because they have no labels. So, unless you happen to know what the icon is, you’re lost. There are times where icons can be similar to one another which can make it confusing to find the app you want. I personally find this screen a little ugly and tiresome. But, for what it is, I don’t know how to offer Apple a better solution than this. So, it is what is.

Apple Pay

If you have an iPhone 5 that doesn’t support Apple Pay, here’s a way to get this feature without replacing your phone. You can load up your cards on to the Apple Watch and then use the watch to pay with Apple Pay by putting it into Apple Pay mode and touching the watch to the payment terminal. Admittedly, I’ve used it a few times (even at the Apple store). It’s handy and prevents the need to pull out your credit card from your wallet. It works with both credit cards and combo credit/debit cards.

Wrist Detection

This piece goes hand-in-hand with Apple Pay. By electing to put your cards onto the device to use with Apple Pay, you automatically enable certain security mechanisms. One of them being wrist detection and passwords. This means that as long as you’re wearing the watch, you don’t have to enter your password. As soon as you take the watch off and put it back on, you’ll be prompted to enter the password again. The thinking is that if someone rips it off of your wrist and steals it, they can’t get into it because it’s automatically passworded as soon as it’s removed. This is a good feature, but at the same time it also offers some unnecessary annoyances in other parts of the operating system.

Overall

The Apple Watch is a somewhat interesting device, but it is pricey. It starts at $349 and goes up from there. The 38mm version is $349 and the 42mm version is $399 for the sport series. The prices only go up from here. For a watch, I guess this an okay price for the sport model. When you get into the pricier versions, the difference is just in the materials.

For the sport version, you only get some kind of tempered glass over the touch surface. If you move up to the $549-$599 price point, you get sapphire. Though apparently the sapphire saps some of the brightness from the screen. So, you’ll want to be prepared for that.

Apple also shot themselves in the foot by doing away with skeuomorphism in iOS. In fact, for the watch faces, the flat colors are just too boring. If there’s justification for using skeuomorphism, watch hands are the place to do it. The flat watch hand colors are, well, drab and boring. I’d rather have a watch face that looks like a watch face with roman numerals and hands that look like metal. Instead, we get flat pointy hands that don’t look real at all. The double whammy here is that there are so few watch faces from which to choose, it’s really a less than ideal situation for the Apple Watch. In fact, there were better looking watch faces on the older square iPod that also doubled as a watch.

If you’re looking for a watch that doubles as an interface to your iPhone, the Apple Watch might be worth the money. But, don’t be disappointed at how sparse the app landscape is right now. There’s really not a ton of apps available. But, don’t go into this purchase thinking it will be the perfect app companion to your iPhone. It won’t and isn’t. It is still too new for that.

The one and only reason to consider the purchase of an Apple Watch is for the watch functionality. Though, you should use it and play with it before you make the decision to buy. There are plenty of watches on the market and having the Apple Watch may not be the smartest of choices if the watch is the most important aspect. Also, the limited faces of the watch means it’s not as flexible as one would hope. It is a small computer after all. So, it should be able to mimic the look of any watch face. Unfortunately, Apple has intentionally limited this functionality to date. Until this piece is fully realized, owning this as a watch may not be the best of choices. Though, the sport watch band is comfortable and easily one of the best innovations here.